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Monday, July 19, 2010

Recycled Fence Picket Beach Signs

I kind of got this idea from another blog I saw at someone's linky party, but I can't for the life of me find it now to give her credit and add her link here. Anyway it was a cute little chipboard plaque that said "gone swimming" and was decorated with some pretty shells and I loved it and wanted to make one.Oh here it is, she found me! Thanks Amanda!

K and I are "beach bums in exile" this summer since she moved back to Colorado. So we are making do with lake swimming and trying to make life as beachy as possible when you live in a desert. That means that every chance we can scrounge up $8 and a bowl of chicken salad and a loaf of bread and some fruit we pack a little cooler and a jug of our special "mommy juice" and head to the water.

Which is exactly what we planned to do one day last week when we were suddenly grounded when Destructo Boy was laid low with a nasty tummy virus.

Poor baby, this is how he looked the entire day.

I figured if we can't go to the beach that we should do the next best thing, crafting...

A trip to Michael's was not in the budget... We are living frugal this summer and trying to use what we have on hand. Being broke has it's upsides I have found. By that I mean that I have found it immensely satisfying to get creative and use something that otherwise I would have considered useless. More about that soon...

We live in the country so we can have this big mess over on the side of the garage that no one seems to care about. So we trekked over there in our flip flops through the weeds and yucca's and found this pile of 30 year old fence pickets from a fence we tore down, oh about 6 years ago, and Mr. Rainbow Creek had the good sense and foresight to throw them over there and save them. We did not meet any rattlesnakes on our journey, which was a good thing.

We have power tools and we know how to use them! This is a chop saw that just happened to be handy because K and Mr. Rainbow Creek were making some repairs on the stair rail. We used it for cutting the pickets into lengths for our signs.

Then we used some scraps of lattice that we dug out of the wood pile for strapping and stapled it on the back to hold the pickets together using my power staple gun.

We mixed up some whitewash, 1 bottle of craft paint to 1/2 bottle of water, in a coffee can and coated the signs. It took less than 5 minutes for them to soak up the paint and dry in the 100 degree heat.

I found a bag of seashells potpourri and some sand dollars that Nature Girl had collected at Crane's Beach last summer for me. We decorated the signs and then brushed glue around and sprinkled them with sand from the LP's sandbox. We made some for gifts for friends too, but I can't decide which one is my favorite.

Yeah, I think this one.

I linked this post to:The Girl Creative, Just Something I Whipped Up Monday. Stop by and check all the creative ideas over there!

3 comments:

you got a huge pile of wood there...i can see these beach chairs forthcoming.

besides the beach chair tutorial, did you also see the deck chairs diy tutorial: single and .... love seat....

and last but not least: you have quite a few great tutorials here. do enter them in our weekly DIY TUTORIAL link parties. the current one is here:http://www.finecraftguild.com/diy-tutorial-linky-party-6/

I love love LOVE that sign! I'm into sign making, too - I don't have easy access to old wood, but i used to back when i lived in WV. (We had those woodpiles beside the outbuilding!) Very nice - very creative! I love the chopsaw - I want some powertools! My step-dad had me using the chop saw the last time i visited. GOOD TIMES! Definitely a new follower ;)